About

From its office in Clayton, Missouri, Danna McKitrick, P.C., delivers legal representation to new and growing businesses, financial institutions, non-profit and government-related entities, business owners, individuals, and families throughout the greater St. Louis region and the Midwest.

Danna McKitrick attorneys practice across many areas of law, both industry- and service-oriented.

On January 15, 2019, the United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of Dominic Oliveira, a purported Independent Contracted driver (“owner-operator”) for New Prime, Inc., an interstate trucking company, holding that Oliveira’s dispute need not be compelled to arbitration.

The case hinged largely on the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), a 1926 law that requires courts to move cases involving interstate commerce disputes to arbitration. However, the FAA includes an exception in Section 1 for “contracts of employment of seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce.”

Oliveira filed a class action lawsuit, alleging that New Prime deprived its driver of legal wages. New Prime sought to resolve the dispute via arbitration pursuant to Oliveira’s owner-operator agreement, which included a mandatory arbitration provision.

The first issue that the Court considered was whether a court or an arbitrator should decide whether the Section 1 exception applied. In a unanimous opinion written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the Court held that “a court should decide for itself whether Section 1’s ‘contracts of employment’ exclusion applies before ordering arbitration. After all, to invoke its statutory powers . . . to stay litigation and compel arbitration according to a contract’s terms, a court must first know whether the contract itself falls within or beyond the boundaries of §§1 and 2 [of the FAA].” Continue reading »

Cyber criminals hack businesses for a myriad of reasons: to rob bank accounts by hacking email accounts and intercepting wire transfers; to file fraudulent tax returns using stolen customer or employee personal data; to commit health insurance or Medicare fraud; to steal intellectual property; to destroy property; and to deny service. Websites are also hacked as a mechanism to cyber hack other businesses. (See data protection tips here.)

Cyber hackers include your employees, identity thieves, contractors and vendors, business competitors, terrorists, state-sponsored actors and others. The success of your business and its very existence could be placed in jeopardy because of unauthorized business account access, loss of ability to execute transactions, regulatory, reputational and litigation costs, and significant remedial costs.

Focusing on the litigation ramifications, let’s use the following fictional ABC Co. case study to understand the various laws involved. Continue reading »

On September 21, 2017, the Illinois Supreme Court handed down its decision in Aspen American Insurance Company v. Interstate Warehousing, Inc, greatly limiting the ability of plaintiffs to sue foreign corporations in Illinois simply because the corporation is registered to do business in and may have minimal contacts with Illinois. As described below, the decision joins Illinois with a nationwide trend disfavoring forum-shopping – a practice in which plaintiffs bring suit against defendants in plaintiff-friendly venues unrelated to the defendant’s contacts and the injury giving rise to the action.

The Aspen case concerned a claim filed in Illinois by a plaintiff who had been injured in a fire which occurred in Indiana. The defendant corporation was incorporated in and maintained its principal place of business in Indiana, although it did maintain a warehouse in Illinois and was also registered to do business in Illinois. The defendant corporation moved to dismiss the lawsuit for lack of proper jurisdiction as a result of these facts and the Circuit Court agreed. On appeal, the plaintiff argued that maintenance of a warehouse in Illinois and being registered as a foreign corporation in Illinois was sufficient to impart general jurisdiction over the corporation. Continue reading »

Visiting a website and merely viewing its contents can bind you to an internet “Terms and Conditions” or “Terms of Use” (“browsewrap” or “clickwrap”) contract.

Website owners, as technology providers, have a dilemma as they wish to facilitate business in the most efficient way. Maintaining the integrity of their software by controlling the scope of the limited software license they are offering is essential to protecting their copyrighted technology.

Given website owners are offering their services to the world, a pressing concern is a disgruntled website user who sues via a class action in the user’s home state. The issue for the courts is how many dispute resolution pre-existing legal rights a website owner can remove through its browsewrap contract, often called “Terms and Conditions,” if the website user receives little to no notice of its existence or has no knowledge that such a notice refers to a binding contract.

If you look carefully at a website you frequently use, you are likely to see various notices in capital letters in highlighted colors referencing that your use of the website is an automatic agreement to the website policies of privacy and terms and conditions. You may not know that this means you are binding yourself to a contract. If you do click on that bothersome notice link, you will most likely notice a nonnegotiable contract that contains a choice of law, agreement to arbitrate, and/or class action waiver. Given the limited attention span of a website user, most users will not click on the link. This is especially true if the website owner has buried the notice at the very end of the page, made it as inconspicuous as possible, and does not require any action to proceed with using the website. Continue reading »

In the JOBS Act adopted in April 2012, Congress required the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) to adopt rules legalizing (i.e., exempting from the requirement to register with the SEC) the offer and sale of securities by small business issuers (which cannot afford registered public offerings) using mass media, to-wit: the Internet, social media, etc. Historically, both state and federal exemptions required “privateness” and forbade “general solicitation.”

On October 30, 2015, the SEC, in a 686 page release, finally adopted rules (see pages 547-686) to allow investment crowdfunding (the use of mass media to make offers and sales to non-accredited investors, i.e., persons with less than $1 million net worth and incomes under $200,000 annually). The rules will become effective in April 2016.

Supporters argue that these rules simply bring the offering and sales of securities into the modern age of mass media and allow persons of limited means to participate in the great boom of entrepreneurship. Critics, on the other hand, point out that those are the very persons who are the least investment sophisticated and the most vulnerable to financial fraud.

To much ballyhoo, on October 30, 2015, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) finally adopted rules to allow investment crowdfunding (which the SEC calls “Regulation Crowdfunding”). That is, it allows the use of mass media (Internet, etc.) (called “general solicitation”) to make offers and sales to non-accredited investors. Those are persons with less than $1 million net worth and annual incomes under $200,000. (Under present rules, general solicitation may be used only to solicit purchases from “accredited” investors.) The new rules will not become effective before April 2016.

“Regulation Crowdfunding”:A Method for True Investment Crowdfunding

Conceptually, allowance of general solicitation to solicit non-accredited investors is a sea change, in direct conflict with the basic investor protection philosophy of the SEC and state regulators since adoption of the Securities Act of 1933. The actual benefit of the new rules, however, is in some doubt. Continue reading »

The U.S. Supreme Court held in Obergefell v. Hodges that there is a constitutional right to marry and that the 14th Amendment’s Due Process and Equal Protection clauses require states to allow same-sex marriages and to recognize same-sex marriages lawfully performed in other states.

The Obergefell decision is not an employment decision. However, the Equal Protection language in the opinion will require companies to make some changes to their employment practices, training, manuals, forms, beneficiary designations, and other personnel policies going forward.

Obergefell followed the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Windsor which held that the federal government’s interpretation of “marriage” and “spouse” must apply to both opposite sex and same-sex unions. Windsor made employee benefits like the Family Medical and Leave Act (“FMLA”), COBRA, and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (“ERISA”) available to all same-sex spouses of federal employees.

The labor landscape has changed and it will continue to change. The average worker has become increasingly responsible for the more traditional aspects of the employment relationship including health insurance, pension, and job security. There also has been a substantial increase in the numbers of part-time workers, workers/employees classified as exempt from overtime premium pay, and workers misclassified as independent contractors. Commentary and theory abounds as to the reason for the loss of full-time jobs, much less middle class jobs, including outsourcing, computers/software, Affordable Care Act, robots, automation, high taxes, globalization, etc.

Suffice it to say, a legal backlash is building against this new terrain. Proposed restrictive legislation, administrative rule-making, and recent court cases show evidence of a concerted attempt to re-create or retrieve the job security and wages and benefits of days gone by.

Most recently, the U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”), in a long-awaited announcement on June 30, 2015, proposed a new rule that will decrease the ability of companies to classify their employees as exempt from premium overtime wages under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”).

Backdrop – Increase in Part-time Workers

This legal backlash is due, in part, to other recent and dramatic changes in the number of part-time workers:

Since 2007, the number of “involuntary” part-time workers has doubled.

Employers are increasingly using software tools such as the use of just-in-time scheduling software. Estimates are that 17 percent of the work force is now employed by companies that use just-in-time scheduling software. Employees accordingly work fluctuating work weeks with uncertain schedules.

Another contributing factor is business practices, such as the use of “call in shifts” where the employer does not confirm need for services until two hours before start time.

In response, a host of bills are being introduced in many states and municipalities to legislate predictable scheduling.

Backdrop – Misclassification

Likewise, misclassification of workers has also increased. Companies are attempting to shift work from employees to independent contractors, especially in the construction, transportation, and cab industries using a variety of strategies. Continue reading »

Your company is an “A” player and it has done everything right in the U.S. in protecting its intellectual property (“IP”). You have not just relied upon a “smile.” You’ve invented a unique product called Superstar® widget and it is not yet offered by your competitors. Vast amount of resources have been poured into the development of the Superstar widget. Prior to introducing the Superstar widget, you used due diligence and used the IP Awareness Assessment Tool on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website to identify what IP you have, if it has value, and if it can be protected under U.S. law.

Upon identifying your IP, the company retained capable attorneys who were successful in obtaining U.S. trademark registrations on the corporate name, non-functional design, and logo so customers could more easily identify the Superstar widget and its association with the company. Superstar widget packaging correctly evidences all registered trademarks.

Not quite ten months late, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on October 23, 2013 proposed rules to allow entrepreneurs and other small businesses to advertise investments in their companies on the Internet and in other general venues, and to allow persons other than wealthy investors to purchase those investments. Congress, in the JOBS Act signed by President Obama on April 5, 2013, had told the SEC to propose such rules by December 31, 2012. (In fairness, the SEC was faced with great pressures from numerous quarters, including the legislators themselves, concerning the content of the rules, which made that deadline impossible to meet.)

This type of investing, called “investment crowdfunding,” was illegal, and will remain illegal until the process of review, amendment and adoption of final rules is complete. The SEC has asked the public for comment on the proposed rules within 90 days. At least a few months of further processing after that 90 day period will be required before the rules are final. Continue reading »